Local artists who struggle to show their work are getting a helping hand from a new South African mobile app.
The recently launched Exhibid app provides a free online gallery for visual artists to showcase any unsold works and its creators have also set up an exhibition fund to assist them with the costs of a physical showing.
App creator Cedric Vanderlinden said artists who registered their profile on the app could apply for the Exhibid Exhibition Fund, which would give them R1,500 towards the costs of hosting a physical exhibition in return for promoting the app via their event marketing materials and social media.
“What we are trying to do is create a groundswell of support for our local artistic community and to use technology to make it easier for South Africans to buy and sell art.”
Himself an artist, Vanderlinden said Exhibid had been designed as a response to a specific problem that many South African artists faced.
“In a wide and disparate geographic area, and having neither the opportunity nor the means to easily exhibit their work, how do artists connect with art lovers?”
Drawing on the same principles as location-based dating apps, he said the Exhibid app helped to overcome this challenge by showing potential buyers all locally available artworks in their area.
“The ‘art in your pocket’ app enables users to browse for and bid on art outside the confines of the traditional gallery space. The artist is free to accept or reject a bid and, once a fair price is settled on, Exhibid connects the artist and buyer directly.”
Secure payment is made via the app and is only released when the GPS signal indicates that the artist and buyer are in the same location for collection – which protects both parties.
Vanderlinden said, as a professional artist and gallerist, he understood the problems that many local artists faced, including the stiff competition for gallery space.
“Many working visual artists are struggling to make sales because they have neither the means nor the opportunity to exhibit their work formally,” he said, adding that the result was that potential buyers saw only a very limited selection of what was available on the local art scene.
“Every artist that I know is sitting on a stockpile of artworks that may have been shown but just haven’t found the right buyer at the right time for the right price. If someone makes them an offer and they decide to accept it, surely it’s better than just sitting there gathering dust?”
He said artists who had registered on the app could also apply for the Exhibid Exhibition Fund, which gives them R1,500 towards the costs of hosting a physical exhibition in return for promoting the app via their marketing materials and social media.
For more information, visit www.exhibid.co.za and click on the “Apply for fund” link.
The free Exhibid app, which was developed by RRZ Innovations, is available via the App Store and Google Play.
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